Paramount Pays $2 Million for J.J. Abrams Film Pitch

Paramount, going against the recent trend amongst Hollywood studios to halt spending for the rest of the year, just closed a deal valued at nearly $2 million on a pitch for a feature film penned by Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada, 27 Dresses) and Simon Kinberg (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, X-Men: The Last Stand, Sherlock Holmes) with J.J. Abrams and Bryan Burk producing.

All parties are currently staying quiet as to what the plot of the film is and with writers whose genres differentiate so greatly, any cute/endearing film expert (like myself) can make an educated guess that it’s probably going to involve mutated husband and wife spy detectives who have 27 Prada dresses made by the devil. Well, may not exactly like that, but close… real close.

With McKenna’s background being more female-driven and Kinberg’s that of action, I’m extremely excited to see what these two have up their sleeve that would cause Paramount to shell out that kind of dough.

Even Abrams acknowledges that these two aren’t the most likely of pair.

“These two writers couldn’t be more different, the genres they write seem almost diametrically opposed, but they came to Bad Robot with a pitch that thrilled us. We feel extremely lucky to get to work with this amazing team.”

While this would mark the first time McKenna and Kinberg have penned a script together, this is not the first time the long-time friends have worked together as they just recently worked on rewrites for the upcoming Tina Fey and Steve Carell romantic comedy, Date Night. The notion that FOX had to bring on script doctors of McKenna & Kinberg’s caliber has me a bit frightened as to what shape the film is currently in or what the end product will be.

This film will mark the fourth film in two years that Paramount has picked up from Bad Robot (including Star Trek 2), with the fifth more than likely being the sequel to the 2008 hit thriller, Cloverfield. Not bad for a company that 10 years ago was steel reeling from the infamous Felicity hairstyle disaster of 1999.